I didn't know yet.
But I knew some things about it.
I knew that whatever footage existed—the Zamboni, the chair, all of it—had been captured without my understanding of what it would become. I'd signed a release form. I'd agreed to be part ofa story about the Storm. I hadn't agreed to be like a pinned frog, dissected for entertainment.
Adrian had made choices about what to film and what to send. He decided not to tell me. Maybe those choices came from fear. Maybe from love. Maybe some complicated tangle of both.
They were still making choices about me.
I looked down at my hands. Orange dust still clung to my fingertips—bright against the dim light.
On the frozen TV screen, the crying woman was still reaching. The walking man was still leaving.
I didn't need answers tonight. I only needed to know what I wasn't willing to accept.
I wasn't willing to be edited without consent.
I wasn't willing to be the punchline in someone else's joke.
"I'm okay," I said finally.
Jake's eyebrows shot up. "You're okay?"
"I'm not okay okay. I know where I am. I know what I'm not willing to let happen."
"And what's that?"
I looked at Jake and then Evan.
"I'm not going to let them decide who I am. Whatever footage exists, I get to have a say in it. And if the network thinks they can turn me into a joke without my input—" I stopped. Breathed. "They're going to find out I'm harder to edit than they think."
Jake's face split into a fierce grin.
"There he is," he said.
Evan stared at me. "You're not the mess you think you are. For the record."
I looked back at the frozen TV screen, the moment suspended, waiting for someone to press play.
Tomorrow, I'd have to ask questions I didn't want to ask. I might have to hear answers that would break something I wasn't ready to lose.
But tonight, I was here. In a room with people who wouldn't ask me to be less. Breathing air that didn't smell like anyone's shampoo. Thinking more clearly than I had in days.
Adrian was probably at his hotel, trying to decide.
The cheese dust glittered on my fingers like the world's least dignified war paint.
I left it there. Let them try to edit that out.
Chapter twenty
Adrian
I'd called Naomi at 5 a.m.
Thunder Bay was still dark outside the window, Lake Superior black in the distance. My voice was too loud in the hotel room as I laid out every piece of leverage I had, like playing cards on a table.
The documentation. The emails. The pattern.
